Friday, September 14, 2018

It took a while to learn the details of this, but now we know, thanks to Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer of The New Yorker:

On Thursday, Senate Democrats disclosed that they had referred a complaint regarding President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, to the F.B.I. for investigation. The complaint came from a woman who accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct when they were both in high school, more than thirty years ago.

... The allegation dates back to the early nineteen-eighties, when Kavanaugh was a high-school student at Georgetown Preparatory School, in Bethesda, Maryland, and the woman attended a nearby high school. In the letter, the woman alleged that, during an encounter at a party, Kavanaugh held her down, and that he attempted to force himself on her. She claimed in the letter that Kavanaugh and a classmate of his, both of whom had been drinking, turned up music that was playing in the room to conceal the sound of her protests, and that Kavanaugh covered her mouth with his hand. She was able to free herself.

Now let's go back to yesterday. We didn't know all this. But we knew from The New York Times that "the incident involved possible sexual misconduct between Judge Kavanaugh and a woman when they were both in high school," according to "two officials familiar with the matter." The Washington Post had also referred to "an alleged episode of sexual misconduct."

Then The Guardian published a story characterizing the allegations this way:

A source who said they were briefed on the contents of the letter said it described an incident involving Kavanaugh and a woman that took place when both were 17 years old and at a party. According to the source, Kavanaugh and a male friend had locked her in a room against her will, making her feel threatened, but she was able to get out of the room.

Two serious news organizations had characterized the allegations as sexual in nature, then The Guardian described a scenario that wasn't rape but sounds as if it very well could have been rape-y. Even without the New Yorker story, this seemed pretty bad.

Unless you were a right-winger. To the right, or at least to the right-wingers quoted in this Twitchy post, the whole thing was a laff riot.

I locked my sister in the utility shed for about an hour when I was about that age. Big deal.

The last three tweets, from the sports editor of the Washington Free Beacon, have since been deleted, perhaps because Griswold now realizes that something less than hilarious actually might have happened that night. I think that seemed obvious even before the New Yorker story landed. But I'm not a right-winger. And the other snarkers still aren't embarrassed enough to delete those tweets.